Upcoming Kundiman Events:
Pleasure & Politics:
Food on the Page
with Ligaya Mishan
Saturday, June 5th
2:00 PM–5:00 PM ET
“Spices were among the first engines of globalization…in the ways that we began to become aware, desirous even, of cultures other than our own… The craving for spices still brings the risk of exploitation, both economically… and in the form of cultural appropriation. In the West, we’re prone to taking what isn’t ours and acting as if we discovered it, conveniently forgetting its history and context. Or else we reduce it to caricature, cooing over turmeric-stained golden lattes while invoking the mystic wisdsom of the East. At the same time, a world without borrowing and learning from our neighbors would be pallid and parochial—a world, in effect, without spice.”
–– Ligaya Mishan, New York Times: “How Spices Have Made, and Unmade, Empires”
What is food without the story of its making? To love a dish is to love the labor that brought it to your table. It’s to sense the presence of the chef, to read a signature written in flour and butter, salt and smoke—what in Korean is called son-mat, the taste imparted by one person’s hands and no other’s. The best dishes aren’t necessarily the most complicated, difficult or inventive. But each is a reminder that someone took the time to cook for us, and made sure to get it right.
This three-hour craft class will explore the craft of food writing as an expansive form that allows for poetry and pleasure but also social commentary and critique. We’ll begin with the essential problem of all writing—how to translate experience, in this case the primarily sensual one of eating, into words on a page—and experiment with language and rhythm through prompts and short exercises. We’ll talk about how to find the stories behind the food, build trust in interviews, and avoid exoticism and otherizing (including self-otherizing); and we’ll examine the legacies of colonialism and the hierarchies of power that continue to define the food system today.
This class will be recorded and sent out to all registered participants the following week.
eligibility:
This craft class is open to all writers of color. The non-refundable tuition fee is $50. This class will be held over Zoom. There are scholarship spots available, and applications are open through Thursday, May 20th.
Registration for this class is now closed.
FACULTY:
Ligaya Mishan writes for the New York Times and T magazine. She was a 2020 finalist for the National Magazine Awards, the James Beard Awards, and the IACP Food Writing Awards. Her essays have been selected for the Best American anthologies in Magazine, Food, and Travel Writing, and her criticism has appeared in the New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. The daughter of a Filipino mother and a British father, she grew up in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. She is the co-author, with the chef Angela Dimayuga, of “Filipinx: Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora,” forthcoming from Abrams in October 2021.